Eleanor and the Marquis

[from back of book]

"I won't marry anyone...no one but Hugh!"

Beatrix was determined, but so was her father. With her impoverished cousin Eleanor, she was shipped off to London where her blond beauty would surely get her a suitable husband.

But her aunt, the Dowager Duchess, plotting to make Eleanor; not Beatrix, "the season's rage," asked the aid of her arrogant nephew, the Marquis of Trouvaine.

And the Marquis was willing...but, in the end, would he destroy Eleanor as he had all the others?

Or had he finally met his match?

Eleanor and the Marquis is something I hadn't read in a long time: since I was barely a teen, maybe: an old-school, dime-a-dozen Regency. Not bamming you, no fustian, by the second chapter, we're pulling up to the Dowager Duchess of Carandale's townhouse in Cavendish Square, and from there, the familiar events unfold familiarly -- shopping on Bond Street, driving in Hyde Park, meeting Prinny and the Beau, waltzing (Lady Jersey-approved) at Almacks, being crowned the Season's Incomparable, and making our own fireworks at Vauxhall. Our heroine: a slip of a girl, "barely out of the schoolroom", parson's daughter, unexpectedly beautiful, incurably honest. Our hero: "a noted Corinthian, a veritable Nonpareil and a Leader of Fashion", swinging his quizzing glass, taking his snuff. Between sips of lemonade (in gowns of ruched satin or Valencienne lace), she finds time to make the occasional disapproving noise about his foppishness and the vast economic inequality that has his friend, the Prince Regent, handing out diamond-studded snuff boxes as party favors while ordinary people toil and starve (75). And we all know what that means. Game, set, MATCH.

The writing's, unsurprisingly, not that good and it turns out the schoolgirl-rake pairing is more appealing from the perspective of the schoolroom than the age (++) of the rake. If he's bored with his friends, the Tulips of Fashion, and the Four in Hand Club, why, AT 32, is he still hanging out with them? And why would it take the right girl to turn his attention to the responsibilities of his vast landholdings in Kent?

On the one hand, there's nothing actively objectionable about the book, on the other, it really has no redeeming value and I feel slightly stupider for having read it.